Calhoun, "Tireless Contributor to the Common Good," Moves On
Talk to almost anyone and the first thing mentioned about W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83, who resigned this summer after five years as Alumnae Association executive director, is her brilliant storytelling abilities. Whether you caught her in the hallway, around campus, or in an otherwise dreary meeting, Calhoun could be counted on to interject levity wherever it was justly deserved. Which was pretty much anywhere.
“She uses her theatrical background and her sense of personalities to convey a very vivid picture of the subject matter at hand,” says Alumnae Association President Mary Graham Davis ’65. “At a board meeting we had in New York at my house this year, she had us in stitches, describing different events in her life and her travels. It creates an immediate sense of comradeship and lightens the atmosphere of a meeting. It allows people to have a personal relationship with her, which then you can use to do business.”
For Calhoun, the business at hand from her appointment in 2003 until her departure for Skidmore College in July was inclusivity and member service. “Goal number one was to become a global organization,” says Calhoun, who now serves the Saratoga Springs, New York, college as dean of student affairs. “And really being committed to the old cliché, ‘ask alums what they want and give it to them.’”
During her tenure, a strategic plan was formulated; the association was “re-launched” to embrace its new global goals, and programs carefully assessed, questionnaires mailed, and surveys of alumnae completed. As leader of an Alumnae Association independent from the college, which presents unique organizational challenges, Calhoun was recognized for her ability to see every side of an issue.
“She has the ability to take a topic and turn it like a Rubik’s Cube,” notes Davis. “To look at it from many different angles, which enables discussion and dialogue from new points of view and enlarges the conversation to find room for consensus and decision making.”
Calhoun began her more than twenty-year career at Mount Holyoke somewhat serendipitously, in 1986, as assistant dean of students. Dissatisfied with her graduate program in theater at Columbia University (she earned her MFA in 2001), she returned to western Massachusetts when her husband, Robert, was offered a job in landscape design. A conversation with then dean of the faculty Joseph Ellis gelled her thinking on what had been most meaningful to her at Columbia—her work with students at the Playwrights Horizons Theatre School— and she began work in student affairs.
Calhoun went on to serve the college as ombudsperson, director of diversity and inclusion, and associate dean of the college/dean of students. “There is some way in which my career has been opportunistic,” Calhoun explains. “If I felt [a job at the college] matched my skills, I would pursue that. It was only later that I felt clarity and a drive about what I wanted to do.” That turns out to be an upper-level administrative position in academia where she can think broadly about the future of education for young people.
That makes sense to MHC President Joanne V. Creighton, who says, “In each of Rochelle’s many roles at the college, she has been a trusted friend and colleague to me, and a tireless contributor to the common good.”
A theater and politics double major at MHC, Calhoun remains a passionate advocate for issues that touched her heart as a student: equity, representation, and access and social justice for people historically underrepresented. In addition to helping create an educational-service travel trip for alumnae and working to improve conferences and programs for women of color and international graduates, she was a consultant outside the college for multicultural organizational training, diversity, and conflict resolution; a board member of Girls, Inc. in Holyoke, and an elected member of the South Hadley School Committee.
Stephanie Gonthier, director of finance at the Alumnae Association and its interim executive director, called Calhoun “an exceptionally skilled leader. Her self-deprecating style has us all in stitches— but she’s not just amusing. She is also so skilled and grounded in solid, effective management techniques.”
Before settling comfortably into her new rental house in Saratoga Springs, Calhoun assured her staff that she would not forget them. A day at the racetrack was organized; silly hats required.—M.H.B.
